Five Lessons in Effectiveness
by SuperKateB
Summary: In her life, she's learned five important lessons. She just didn't quite realize it until now.


**Five Lessons in Effectiveness  
****A Law and Order: Trial By Jury Fanfiction  
****Written by Kate "SuperKate" Butler**

**I.**

As a girl, she attended a high-end preparatory school in a high-end neighborhood, the majestic old brick building surrounded by million-dollar homes and encrusted with ivy. The snaking, creeping vines and tall, slender windows with their iron rimming reminded her of the ancient castles she'd seen on their family trip to Great Britain a year earlier.

Pale, with dark hair and darker eyes, she smiled and smoothed her pleated green-and-blue plaid skirt as she tried, timidly, to convince her classmates that she attended the academy because, as her father often told her, she was "brilliant" and would someday be "influential." Regurgitating the words over and over again, not completely certain of their meanings, she only realized later that her efforts meant nothing.

After all, the chatter in the girls' room informed her that she only attended the school because her parents had extra money to spend on their spoiled only child.

Seeing as convincing the other students of her "brilliance" and "influence" was a wasted effort, she resumed standing in the mirror every morning to convince herself.

**II.**

In high school, her counselor poured over her grades and interests and finally decided, one afternoon, that she would be best served by attending a one of the smaller state schools, near Albany.

"Tracey has great potential in the humanities," he informed her parents in their meeting, ignoring her as she sat in the corner, stiff-backed and thoroughly uncomfortable. "She shows interest in the sciences, too, but her marks aren't as high as they could be. For that reason, as well as her personality, I think she'd be geared towards a smaller-end state school. She's a respectful, fairly quiet girl."

She twirled her hair and wondered idly if she could merge with the chair by leaning back hard enough. As it stood, she felt more like part of the scenery than an active participant.

"Unacceptable," her father grunted in his dark, commanding tone. "Her grades are fine, and she's more than outgoing. She'll be a lawyer before you know it."

Her counselor tried to argue, but to no avail.

She attended Princeton in the fall.

**III.**

The rumors she remembered bitterly from grammar school revisited as she forced her way, biting and scratching, through Princeton's pre-law program. While her roommate, a science major, slept restfully in the bunk beds, she struggled through the difficult, dry readings. While her friends, most of whom kept her company only for a few weeks before disappearing, dated around and played the field, she composed lengthy papers on the evolution of the search and seizure statute. While her classmates in the program, truly brilliant and influential, partied together, she studied for quizzes, midterms, and finals.

"Being such an industrious student, however admirable a trait as it may be, is going to make you lonely," her advisor informed her once over coffee. He was a plump, short, balding man with a British accent that, somehow, always brought to her mind the image of the faded paisley wallpaper in her father's office back home. "You should try to be more sociable, Tracey. It would be good for you."

"I'm not lonely," she assured him as she finished off her coffee, staring down at her latest report card with shame-flooded eyes.

She never dared mention to him, or anyone else, about being bitter.

**IV.**

She became the last out of fifty to be accepted into Hudson University's law program. The letter and its unfortunate rankings glared up at her, the daunting, unproud numbers burning into her retinas.

"Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford should have been fighting to accept you!" her father roared in his office, surrounded by three shelves of law books like a human peninsula jutting out into a sea of academia. The office, as it had since her childhood, stank of cigars and a musty, rotting smell that she always associated with dirty money, even knowing far well that it was just the books. "You said it yourself that your GPA was sky-high! You aced your entry tests! You're untouchable!"

"A 3.2 is not sky-high," she whispered to her glass of vodka that night, laying on her father's leather office couch with the lights shut off, breathing in that musty, dirty scent through her nostrils. "Barely scraping up a passing grade is far from untouchable."

In classes at Hudson, in conferences or after papers were returned, she heard the same words from her professors, a shameful mantra in her ears.

"Your papers lack true passion," they said.

"Your style of rhetoric needs more power, more conviction."

"You could learn a great deal from studying your father."

She always frowned when they said this, replying, "But I'm not my father."

The academy and it's musty, rotting books never heard her.

**V.**

"You're a damned fine lawyer, Tracey."

A slam-dunk, twenty-minute verdict return on three counts of rape and one count of murder left her to her own devices, bent low over the New York Journal of Law and her desk lamp in an otherwise dark Hogan Place office; her assistant and the rest of the staff used the conviction as an excuse to leave early. She smiled slightly, glancing up as Arthur Branch stepped through the open door, his coat flung casually over one shoulder.

She shrugged noncommittally. "Tell me that after a hard case, next time," she suggested, smiling like a curly-haired, metropolitan Mona Lisa.

"I mean it," the district attorney retorted warmly. "You railroaded that creep Mel Varner six ways from Sunday and bowled over his flimsy character witnesses like nobody's business." His smile widened, and for a moment, a spark of almost parental pride filled his eyes. "You've got an attitude no one else in this place has, and I'm proud to be your boss. Great work today, counselor."

She smiled at his back, a soft and helplessly sappy gesture, and listened for the click of the outer office door closing before glancing back down at the final page of the article she'd been reading, the author's biography glaring up at her.

"_Five Lessons in Effectiveness: Defense Law Rhetoric" was written by William H. Kibre of the well-known defense Firm Kibre, Lake, and Varner. Kibre resides on Staten Island with his wife Margo and is the father of one Tracey Kibre, an Assistant District Attorney for Manhattan._

She tossed the journal, in all its blue-covered glory, into the first trashcan she passed on the way out of Hogan Place and then started on her way home, whistling.

**Fin.**

Standard Disclaimer: Law and Order: Trial By Jury belong to Dick Wolf and NBC, not me.

Author's Notes: I absolutely adore two things in the world. One is Tracey Kibre, and the other is giving characters back stories. Behold, for now, I have done both!

Written for a Thursday100plus challenge on academia. Reviews and comments always welcome.

March 12, 2005  
5:07 p.m.


End file.
